


Three

by eschscholzia



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Angst, Cave-In, Caves, Claustrophobia, Don't copy to another site, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Locked In, Lothal, May the Thirst, Sort Of, playing fast and loose with canon, thryce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eschscholzia/pseuds/eschscholzia
Summary: Arihnda Pryce thought she left her mining days behind her when she moved to Coruscant, but she'll need all her old job skills to keep her and Grand Admiral Thrawn alive when a cave collapse traps them.





	Three

_Three minutes without air._

Arihnda did not panic when the rockslide happened. She automatically fell back on her emergency training from Pryce Mining. She stayed calm. Breathing too quickly would use up valuable oxygen. She tallied her injuries. Head, check. Her helmet protected her from the falling rock. She flexed her fingers and wrist. Those seemed okay. She pushed off the floor of the tunnel and stood up. Her right leg buckled under her as her foot and ankle shot fiery pains.

Okay, ankle injury.

She felt on her belt for her light stick. She thumbed the switch. It began to make a pale gray light, but the black crack through the lens concerned her. It sputtered and went out. The black seemed even more dark than before. It pressed on her eyeballs, as it always did when she was underground.

A voice spoke close by her. “I regret that my lightstick seems to have gotten lost in the slide.”

Arihnda turned to the uncharacteristically apologetic voice of her companion.

“Some heavy rocks brushed against my side,” he continued. “I seem to have lost much of my equipment belt.”

“Can you see anything in infrared?” she asked Thrawn.

“There is a narrow passageway deeper in, but the exit to the cave is blocked.” Thrawn’s voice was calm. But then he was always calm. Rooting out saboteurs in the factories and he was calm. Following the terrorists to their hideouts in the West Hills, and he was calm. They were trapped in a cave, and he was calm. Did he ever get emotional?

Focus. Since this was not a mine, there probably weren’t refuge rooms at intervals; this was just the peculiar fractured Lothal geology of the West Hills.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I believe that my arm is broken,” Thrawn said finally.

She pursed her lips. “Is the skin broken? Are you bleeding anywhere?”

“The skin is not broken. I do not believe I have any further punctures or lacerations.”  

So neither one of them was in the pink of health, but at least nobody was bleeding. She hobbled along the passageway, leaning one shoulder against the wall to favor her bad ankle, while exploring the limits of their prison at the same time. The passageway thinned down, until both her shoulders touched each wall. Arihnda turned sideways, but could go no further. She reached out with her right hand, and felt a jagged narrow slit in the rock. That was a dead end. She licked her finger and held it out to the crack. It felt cool.

She hobbled back to the rockslide, and slid down the wall until she was seated on the floor. The stone of the cave wall was cool on her back. There was just enough room for them to sit with their legs extended. She tried to stretch out, but bumped his thigh with her good foot.

“Sorry!”

“It is of no consequence,” he replied.

“Would you like the good news or the bad news first?” She laughed bitterly.

“Ah,” Thrawn said. “I remember this from Eli. You are making a joke of a bad situation. You may tell me the dire news in any order.”

Arihnda blinked at his bluntness, then twisted her mouth. It seemed an unnecessary gesture to her in the dark, yet involuntary. She thought of the nights she camped with the Lothal Rangers in the caves in the East Hills. It always felt strange to blink and find it still dark, instinct suggesting the light would come back when she re-opened her eyes. Back to the matter at hand. She blinked again to clear her thoughts.

“So, the back of the cave runs out, but there is a draft of air. As long as the cave is breathing, and if the cave is large enough, we should have a supply of air for a while.”

“The air pressure escaping the cave would explain the storm outside.”

Thrawn was catching on. Good. “Exactly,” she replied, then lapsed back into silence and her tumultuous thoughts.

Stupid thunderstorm. Stupid pink loth-cat that they had followed into the cave as they took shelter. “Loth-kitty? Here tooka-tooka,” she crooned.

No response. Who had ever heard of a pink loth-cat, anyhow?

“Let’s get your arm splinted until we can get you to some bacta,” she suggested.

“Thank you,” her companion replied.

She took off her outer tunic, and with the help of her knife, cut it into strips. It was difficult in the dark, but she managed. She tied the strips around his arm, immobilized with the dead light stick. The rest she folded into a rough triangle and tied his arm up in a sling.

Okay, first aid accomplished. Surroundings surveyed. Contact? She flicked her comm. “Governor Pryce to the Dome, come in.”

Silence.

She repeated the hail.

Still nothing.

“Governor Pryce to any Imperials in range…”

When there was no answer, she tucked the comm away again, and sighed.

“We must be too far underground,” Thrawn suggested.

Arihnda smiled wanly in the dark. She knew that already. It was more of the peculiar geology around here. Pryce Mining had relays in its drifts, but a cave inhabited by only the local wildlife wouldn’t. She stifled a hysterical giggle at the thought of a pink loth-cat batting Thrawn’s lost comm cylinder. Who would believe her?

After an hour or so, with only her undershirt, she began to shiver. Some of the deeper drifts of Pryce Mine # 3 were quite warm and had to be staffed by beings from hot planets, but this cave was near the surface, so it was cool.

“Would it help if you sat over by me?”

Arihnda tried to decline, but her teeth chattered.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Thrawn concluded. She shifted on her hands and good foot, loth-crab style, until she was rearranged sitting next to him. He put his arm around her, holding her snugly to his side. The gaberwool of his tunic radiated warmth. She swallowed hard. It was embarrassing, but long-dormant training kicked in and she had to do what they needed for survival.

“When do you think they’ll start looking for us?” She spoke very carefully to avoid chattering again.

“Hopefully this evening.” They had split up into search parties upon reaching the Hill Country. Eventually the garrison would notice when they didn’t report back.

She leaned her head against the wall and waited.

* * *

 

_Three days without water._

Arihnda jerked awake. Somehow her head had come to rest on Thrawn’s shoulder. She hoped he hadn’t noticed. Oh no, what if she drooled on him? There was probably something in the Imperial Military Code about the impermissibility of drooling on one’s fellow officer.

Her mouth was too dry anyhow. Her lips were cracked. The water had run out yesterday. She had her hip flask, but it was only half full when they came in. She and Thrawn took turns sharing the water from their canteens. Even that was gone now. It had been two days since they had gotten stuck in the bottom of the cave. Two days since they left to try to find the base of the terrorists. Two days since it started raining.

She felt something cold hit her head. She reached up. There was a drop of water on her head. The water must have made its way through the layers of rock above them. There was a layer of shale underneath the more porous sandstone and limestone of the West Hills, remnants of an ancient Lothali sea. And here was a seep. And more importantly, a source of water. She crawled on her knees to find her blast helmet. She flipped it up to catch the drips. By careful listening and trial and error, she got their canteens placed under two more drips.

Arihnda nudged her companion awake. “Thrawn,” she hissed. “Where’s your blast helmet?”

She felt him shake himself awake. “Hmm?” His voice was thick with grogginess.

“Your helmet. I need it to catch the drips.”

“I left it outside the cave before we came in.”

Arihnda growled. “Why’d you do a crazy thing like that?”

”Chiss are taught that as children.” Thrawn sounded aggrieved. “You leave a marker outside the cave when you enter.”  

The air left her lungs all at once. She rubbed the back of her head, which was starting the dull ache of dehydration.

“Oh.” She took another breath and exhaled again. “I guess that’s a difference between you and me: I was always taught never to go in a cave without your head protection.”

“It would seem to be at cross-purposes,” he said.

Well, if they didn’t have his helmet…. She considered her options. Sitting with her mouth open under the drips like a baby bird was another option. Her cupped hands under the drips would get tired. Ruefully, she slipped off one boot and slid it under a fourth drip.

Now all they could do for a bit was wait for the water to accumulate.

“Tell me a story about when you were a kid,” she said. “Where did you go caving? What sorts of caves are they on your home planet?”

* * *

 

_Three weeks without food._

Arihnda really wanted a Giva Jumbo. There had been a slick shiny chrome diner around the corner from Higher Skies that served a mean Giva Jumbo for under 3 credits. She wanted one in a bowl as big as her face, with a giant floating piece of celery garnish.

As best as they could figure, they’d been there for four days. His chrono still worked, at least. The air was more humid now; the air smelled of not-quite-petrichor with the tang of lime. She wondered if further back, beyond the narrow slit at the back of the cave, there were rock formations created by centuries of summer rain showers. The air hadn’t seemed damp enough when they came in for that, she decided.

The water drips were enough to wet their mouths periodically, but not more than that. Her ankle was getting better; she could hobble around on it. She was concerned about Thrawn though. He had hissed once when he accidentally jostled his bad arm taking his turn drinking from her helmet. He seemed pretty stoic. She hoped he wasn’t concealing a worse injury; it would be bad for her service record to have “responsible for the death of a Grand Admiral from internal bleeding” on it.

Arihnda tapped her leg. They’d run out of stories yesterday. At least they had a basic understanding now of the difference between caving and mining protocols, the major festivals on their respective homeworlds, family customs for such celebrations, and the dishes eaten at same. They had just finished useful phrases in native tongues. He taught her “Which way to the Conveyex Station?’ in Sy Bisti, whereas she decided to jump past “One loth-rat pie, please” and go with “My past is littered with bad relationships” in Lothali.

She had learned that phrase in the old monochrome holomovies that they watched in language class. They featured the strange antiquated architecture with windcatcher towers and overly formal tenses that she had no idea when she would ever use or why they were included. The teacher explained it was a movie for adults immigrating to Lothal to learn conversational Lothali, hence the strangely inappropriate vocabulary list. And the clothes! So quaint! A giggle burst out of her mouth, and then she couldn’t stop laughing. She whooped until tears streamed down her face and her throat choked up.  

A sharp pain to her cheek made her breath again.

“Oww!” she yelled. “What the kriff!”

“I feared you were becoming hysterical.” Did his voice sound smug?

She nursed her chin. “You wouldn’t understand.” She sulked, feeling her forehead furrow.

“I seem to have the time to listen; you could try explaining.”

She took a deep breath. “You see, everybody speaks Galactic Standard on Lothal. It’s the language of the Empire and commerce. But several generations ago we spoke Lothali. They teach it to children in school as a course, but nobody speaks it at home full time any more. We had these holovids in monochrome- forty-year-old ones, from the early colonial days, that repeated the same phrases over and over again in different inflections, and the people all wore the native hats that the peasants wear out in the agricultural provinces, and we’d make fun of them because it was cool to be Republic citizens and above all that, y’know?”

“Hmm…” was all Thrawn replied.

Arihnda was pretty sure he didn’t know; her face felt warm with self-consciousness. How could she have lost control like that over a memory of a dumb school holo?

“I did all that work to lose my Lothali accent when I got to Coruscant, but I still have some of it. It’s funny how languages slip together.”

“Yes.”

She shivered. Goosebumps prickled on her skin again. She snuggled back against Thrawn. He at least seemed to radiate warmth. He put his good arm around her, pulling her tight, then dropped his arm. Arihnda took a deep breath.

“Thrawn, it’s... it’s been good spending time with you. It’s good to have somebody to talk to, even if they’re a captive audience.” She sighed. “I understand if… when… if when we get out of here, we go back to how things were. None of what we’ve said leaves here, right?” She tried her best to not sound as desperate as she felt. Would they be found before they starved? She sniffed.

“Shhh…” His hand smoothed the hair out of her face. She felt the calluses on his fingers; she wondered what sort of mechanical work a Grand Admiral did in his spare time. Gently, his hand cupped her cheek, turning it up to where she supposed his face must be. A very gentle press on her forehead; had he just kissed her? She licked her cracked lips. She squirmed against his side, leaning over carefully so as not to jostle his bad arm. Arihnda craned her neck forward, her lips extended, searching. She felt the soft exhale of his nose, and the silence of a held breath.

A drop of water pinged in the blast helmet turned bucket.

She moved infinitesimally forward. Contact. She pressed her lips chastely against his. They were just as rough as hers. He sighed.

A clatter of rockfall made them both jump. The sound was muffled; it came from the other side of the slide.

“Admiral? Governor? Are you in there?” A woman’s voice called from the other side of the rocks.

“We’re here, thank you Hammerly,” Thrawn called out.  

“Oh thank goodness!” the woman’s voice said.  “We’ve had to comb the canyons on speeders; the scanners aren’t working here. Something about the magnetics of the rocks. We finally spotted the Grand Admiral’s blast helmet on the talus.”  

Arihnda swallowed hard, trying to get some remnant saliva in her mouth, and then cupped her hands to shout at their rescuers. “The Grand Admiral’s injured. He’s going to need a med kit and bacta!”

“Thank you Governor. We’ve got the shifters, and we’ll have you out in no time.”

After that, it only remained to sit in silence as the sharp clink of rocks being moved reverberated on the tiny walls of their trap. She wasn’t sure how long it took to free them, but she made sure Thrawn went first out of the cave. His crewmen rushed forward to shake his good hand. Three of them might have even clapped and she knew one person whistled. She stood at the mouth of the cave, blinking, as he was led away by the med teams. She shivered, even in the warmth of the sun.

“Are we safe?” Arihnda asked.

“Yes, Governor Pryce. We’ve got you. The Rebels got away this time, but we can chase them another day.”

“I kept us alive,” she murmured. Her knees trembled and her hands shook. She stumbled, and sat down heavily on a boulder behind her.

“The Governor’s in shock.” Somebody rushed up and placed a shiny emergency blanket around her. Numbly, she was helped into a speeder, where she accepted a canteen of water and a ration bar. The driver shifted gears, turning it around, back toward Capital City.

Giva Jumbo. And a bath. A _warm_ bath. Arihnda closed her eyes against the too-bright sunlight, warm despite her uncontrollable shivers.  

As they left, they did not see a loth-cat appear at the mouth of the cave, hiss, and turn back inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Zalt for the prompt, and for organizing the challenge. Once again, I am showing up late with Starbucks. Thank you to everyone on the Thryce Discord for the encouragement. This story is un-beta'd; if you find any typos please let me know. 
> 
> My prompt was "[Giva Jumbo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Giva_jumbo)."


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